The best part about Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of atonement, is that it assumes we all need to atone. Religious views aside, this holiday doesn’t just ask us to ask forgiveness from a G-d, it commands us to ask forgiveness to our fellow humans. I love this! Not because asking for forgiveness is easy or fun, but because it assumes we are flawed and it assumes we are forgivable. For someone like me, who has spent many hours trying to “get life right,” maybe aiming for perfect experiences when I should have been aiming for meaningful ones, I find this holiday comforting. It assumes that of course we have messed up, and of course we will want to check in with the people in our lives who we care about, and of course we will want them to know we are thinking about our actions. This isn’t a holiday that assumes we are bad people and we should feel horrible, placing immobilizing amounts of guilt. It’s the opposite. It assumes we are JUST PEOPLE and that fact alone means we will miss the mark occasionally. It also doesn’t give us an excuse to wallow in guilt. Yom Kippur asks us to recognize what we have done wrong, and apologize to those we love.

I’m still learning, as I hope we all are, and one thing I am learning is that I am not all good or all bad, social events that I go to are not all good or all bad, people I meet, and people I love are not all good or all bad. Sounds obvious…but I promise you this is not an obvious concept to me. I like things neat and tidy, all or nothing, black and white. I love you, I disgust you, I need you, I would never rely on you. For me, Yom Kippur is a holiday about relationships. It’s an opportunity to see the best and worst in others and ourselves and to recognize how we could do better next time.

I watch my kids interact with other kids. Endless amounts of times I have stood at a playground or in a home and watched our kids and other kids love, play, and hurt and get hurt by other children, almost on an endless loop. They laugh, hold hands, run, push, steel, cry, yank, apologize, hug, smack, cry, apologize, hold, hug, cry, laugh, squeeze, hurt, apologize, repeat. And after this normal play, that to grownups looks like an emotional rollercoaster, when we tell them its time to go, they, hug their friends and ask if their friends can sleep over, if we can see them later, tomorrow, they cry they don’t want to leave, ect… they feel close and secure in their relationships.

Screwing up is part of the deal. Didn’t a wise Rabbi say that?:) Being immobilized with guilt or denying your own human flaws is not part of the deal. If you think you are a total screw up, well you are wrong. You can totally screw up, but you can’t be a total screw up, because you have the opportunity to own your actions. Think you are totally perfect? Also wrong, and we know this because we are human, we are designed to mess up, to grow, to apologize, and to try again.

Some Jews fast on this holiday, others just reflect. There is so much pain and injustice in the world. Let us not be immobilized by imperfections, but mobilized by a desire to do better.

Rachel

**If you want help taking ownership of your time, contact me about my time-management workshop. It’s fun, personal, and will leave you with a calendar you will love. Interested in shaking things up? Contact me about my individual, couples, or group Vision Board workshop and discover new ways of creative planning.

I keep telling myself that I REALLY want to make time to ______________________

this year. I haven’t done it because __________________, ______________, and

____________________. I spend most of my time _____________________.

When I do get a free moment I usually spend it _______________________ or

________________________. If I really wanted to spend time doing (above said

activity) I would need to spend less time ____________________________ and

_______________________. Is it worth it to me? If it is, I am willing

to__________________________ and __________________________ to

make this happen. If it’s not worth it to me, I recognize that (above said activity) is a nice

aspiration for someone, just not me and I am going to let it go and take it off my

“to-do” list for now. This will allow more mental energy to be freed from obsessing

over my “should’s” list.

Respectfully,

(YOU!)________________________________________________

*The “pen” is powerful. It’s hard for our psyche to ignore what we write. Written goals are more powerful. Our actions need not be driven by inertia, with even just a small amount of consideration, we can make big changes, understand what brings meaning to our life, and clear out the time suckers that leave us feeling depleted.

**If you want help taking ownership of your time, contact me about my time-management workshop. It’s fun, personal, and will leave you with a calendar you will love. Interested in shaking things up? Contact me about my individual, couples, or group Vision Board workshop and discover new ways of creative planning.

I’m struggling knowing how much to struggle, how much to push myself. It’s hard to know isn’t it? When are we trying “hard enough,” and when are we trying too hard? How do you find the sweet spot? Right now, I am in the middle of career transition, family transition (being away from the home/my children a bit more), trying to learn some new very specific skills (ones that don’t come naturally to me since they involve numbers), while relying on and leveraging the skills I know I am good at. The part where I often get stuck is, knowing how hard to push myself. Sometimes it feels like an exciting and interesting challenge…and sometimes it feels like trying to stuff an octopus into a sack.

We have grown up with slogans like “no pain no gain,” “face your fears,” and “no guts no glory.” And while I often disagree with these sayings, I believe deep down I still hold on to them in a self-punishing kind of way. So much so that when something is easy…I usually think I am doing it wrong! For example, if I make my kid a peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat bread (very easy for me), my self talk usually jumps to something like ‘well you could have made the bread yourself and made it much more nutrient rich…ect’. In the past I have delivered extremely successful workshops (based on both feedback and being paid to repeat the workshop for other groups), but if I enjoyed myself “too much” while giving the workshop (because I prepared ahead of time and the delivery is easier than the prep for me), I might focus on what might have been wrong with it rather than what worked. I would likely identify that as negative self-talk if I were one of my own clients, especially since it isn’t a useful thought pattern as it eclipses any positive outcomes that might benefit repeating and highlights only the negative. So back to my point, do we need pain to gain? I looked up this phrase and found some pretty cool counter statements such as this one: “I don’t accept the maxim ‘there’s no gain without pain’, physical or emotional. I believe it is possible to develop and grow with joy rather than grief. However, when the pain comes my way, I try to get the most growth out of it.” – Alexa McLaughlin. I also liked this one I found: “I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.” — Anne Morrow Lindbergh. So where does that leave this concept that is widely believed, ‘anything worth doing is worth suffering for’? It sounds kind of silly. Studies have proven that hugging someone lowers your heart rate. So clearly it is worth doing and few would say hugging is a form of suffering. That being said, exercise might be considered suffering to some people, but clearly it is worth doing. I think hard meaningful work must be differentiated from suffering by choice…suffering because we mistakenly equate suffering with accomplishment. The way we move through a process must hold at least as much importance as the outcome…right?

So really, after all of these words what I am trying to explore is my commitment to a peaceful process. So quickly, when I decide to take on a new challenge do I often abandon my intention of a peaceful process. Fear of failure, fear of loss, fear of the unknown make me hold tighter, be more rigid, set a bar that I am not even sure I want to meet, and because it becomes a fear driven process, rather than a curious process, I often fail to reassess, likely missing important tweaks that might be needed along the way. With a nose to the ground attitude we surely miss out on other better opportunities along the way, or perhaps better and g-d forbid different ways of accomplishing what we originally set out to. We leave little room to change our mind, even if its for the better.As the quote above says, we must remain vulnerable throughout the process. It is this very vulnerability that will enhance our chances of the best outcome. When we are suffering, we lose this vulnerability for sure.

So perhaps that is our answer to the question…We know we have gone too far, pushed too hard when we fail to hold on to our vulnerability, our ability to remain flexible and adaptive.

Cheers to you and your adaptability

Rachel

**If you want help taking ownership of your time, contact me about my time-management workshop. It’s fun, personal, and will leave you with a calendar you will love. Interested in shaking things up? Contact me about my individual, couples, or group Vision Board workshop and discover new ways of creative planning.

“Are we at least willing to catch ourselves spinning off…Do we at least aspire to not consider ourselves a problem, but simply a pretty typical human being who could at that moment give him-or herself a break and stop being so predictable?”
Pema Chodron

I have been experimenting. Pema Chodron, a prolific and quite accessible Buddhist writer, implores us to stop trying to make things black and white, and I am trying to do just that. By things I mean situations, predicaments, people, events, the way we feel about ourselves at a given moment. We usually almost immediately label them as good or bad. She asks us to stop living in a way that is so dualistic. It seems like a simple suggestion but I realize I cling to black and white labels…they make me feel safe. I decided to take a simple form of the concept into my every day life and notice how often I labeled something as good/bad, negative/positive, scary/not scary, fun/boring, easy/hard, stupid/important, healthy/not-healthy, and so on. I cling to labels! We all do. We want to know how we should feel or act so we can have a plan and the quickest way to do that is to label something. Labeling our feelings in a dualistic way seems compulsive but it doesn’t necessarily help us.

How often do we needlessly evaluate a situation as all good or all bad? How many times a day do we scrutinize and label ourself as “unhealthy” from eating one small treat, or “stupid” because we forgot something, or “lazy” because we decided to rest? Pema states that “trying to find absolute rights and wrongs is a trick we play on ourselves to feel secure and comfortable.” Most of the time, I don’t thing we even realize we are labeling.

Pema asks the question, “How do we stop struggling against ourselves?” What does it say about our mental states that so often, the only time we are calm is when we are dulling it with a glass of alcohol, a carbohydrate snack, or television at the end of the day? (I have used all of these tactics to attempt relaxation). None of these things are inherently bad. If you know me, you know that eating frozen yogurt in bed is my ultimate pleasure, but it can’t be the only time of day we feel without struggle…and it often is, particularly when we are looking at ourselves with a critical and unkind lens. The point she is hammering home…I think…is to stop trying to control our life so much, to stop trying to make it void of obstacle, to stop pretending we can make the events in our life so predictable and pain free, so without mess.

Exercises:

Challenge 1: 48 hours of noticing what labels you use in your mind. Are you calling a meal you are eating good or bad? Was your day at the office stressful or relaxing? Did your children have a respectful day or a disrespectful day? Was your time at home disappointing or enjoyable? Was that meeting stupid or important? Did you eat a “bad thing” or a “perfectly healthy thing? Was that new person you met “interesting” or “boring”. Are you being a “good partner” or a “bad partner”? Was that thing you made “beautiful” or “ugly”? What other examples might you have of labels?

Challenge 2: Think about what you might notice about your labeling? When you try and be gentle with yourself, does this help reduce your labeling?

Cheers,
Rachel

**If you want help taking ownership of your time, contact me about my time-management workshop. It’s fun, personal, and will leave you with a calendar you will love. Interested in shaking things up? Contact me about my individual, couples, or group Vision Board workshop and discover new ways of creative planning.

I am someone who finds comfort in keeping order, having a routine, and holding tightly to my intentions. Much of the time it is to my benefit. I get a clear idea of what I want and I go after it like a hungry lion. Little things don’t get in my way and when they do I just run faster, try harder, be stronger. Then, I pant, out of breath, and set my next goal and go after it. It can be exhausting but I have always been this way. This can be a great mode to be in as it helps me handle adversity, I don’t expect things to be easy, and I often get what I want. Until I don’t. When obstacles get in my way, I rarely stop and think, “huh, this is more challenging than I thought, perhaps I will change my course of action” or “maybe this isn’t the right time for this goal.” I wind up having very little compassion for myself and often see myself as week or inept for not being able to make what I want to happen, happen. I don’t always see the toll it takes on myself or those around me. I get a kind of tunnel-vision and instead of broadening my perspective, cutting myself some slack or allowing myself to proceed with a more gentle and realistic approach (that might lead to an even better plan), I often cling tightly to the “original plan.”

Pema Chodron states, “We spend all our energy and waste our lives trying to re-create these zones of safety, which are always falling apart. That’s the essence of samsara – the cycle of suffering that comes from continuing to seek happiness in all the wrong places.” That is precisely what I am doing and I often don’t understand why, if I stay vigilantly “in the zone,” I would ever fail even under circumstances beyond my control. I also struggle to see when failure in one area might lay the groundwork to succeed in alternate area. However until I understood why I cling so tightly to my intentions, it was hard for me to be compassionate to myself. I cling tightly because I’m trying to avoid pain, disappointment, and discomfort. I don’t want to be caught off guard. What Pema Chodron also says is that people challenge their comfort zones in different ways and while some people feel challenged when they leave the country, others feel challenged when they don’t get to sit in their favorite chair at their dining room table. She has so much compassion for people, including herself; she understands that “challenge” looks very different to each of us. So what’s the point?

The point is that I find it hard to follow the often prescribed “compassion for self” concept until I know what exactly I need compassion for. What Pema Chodron helped me understand is that much of my obsession with plans, order, and routine is often purely my desire to feel safe…which I deserve to feel, as we all do. Again, this vigilance often turns out well as this type of neurotic personality is rewarded in our society (think of all the apps that have been invented to help us plan, calendar, track, list, organize, predict est…). However I would also like to be able to recognize when my basic human desire to feel safe (being able to predict) gets in the way of me being able to see that disrupting, disturbing, or detouring from the original plan could be in my best interest.

Homework:
In true Buddhist fashion, I challenge us all to just notice when a change in plan and/or a lack of predictability brings us anxiety, fear, or sadness.

**If you want help taking ownership of your time, contact me about my time-management workshop. It’s fun, personal, and will leave you with a calendar you will love. Interested in shaking things up? Contact me about my individual, couples, or group Vision Board workshop and discover new ways of creative planning.

A couple of weeks ago I was having a horrible day. I was tearful, sad, angry, confused, and filled with self-doubt. In those moments I was losing faith in myself, unable to see any of my strengths, any of my unique gifts (that every human surely possesses)…and I was worried I might have lost my “powers.” As I thought about my upcoming meeting with one of my clients later in the day, I feared I would have nothing to offer. I showed up to the meeting reminding myself…just be present for them. I did this and guess what happened?

I sat down with my client and gave her all of my focus. I listened with compassion. I reminded myself that Life Coaching isn’t about the coach being the “fixer” and the client being the “receiver” of magic solutions, but instead an integrated process between client and coach. I trusted this process because it was much bigger than me. At the end of our session, her shoulders were more relaxed, the pace at which she spoke slowed, she hugged me, thanked me, and said something like…my challenges seem so simple now, but the perspective we came to together made it all manageable. In that moment that she was thanking me for making her problems manageable, she reminded me that I still had much to offer and that self-pity often comes when we are overly self-focused. When we forget our role in our communities and the many relationships that we have, be it with colleagues, family, or friends, these are the moments we also forget what we have to offer. It happens when we forget what we mean to other people. It happens when we forget, even if only momentarily, that everything is not all about ourselves. It happens to the best of us.

I realized my moments of self-doubt were mostly about me feeling like I had nothing left to contribute. That’s what self-pity does to us…it blinds us to our own gifts…our own unique “powers.” So what’s the lesson? The lesson for me was, when I am feeling sorry for myself, I need to take a pause on thinking about my own self-doubt. Make it not about me, leave myself alone, stop picking on myself. Instead, perhaps listen to another person’s challenges, or help someone be kind to themselves. It doesn’t mean I have to “fix” them…only acknowledge and validate their experience. In the end…I believe it’s what we all want…to be acknowledged and validated…to be seen as we see.

With gratitude,

Rachel

**If you want help taking ownership of your time, contact me about my time-management workshop. It’s fun, personal, and will leave you with a calendar you will love. Interested in shaking things up? Contact me about my individual, couples, or group Vision Board workshop and discover new ways of creative planning.

It’s been a rough month. Things I thought I could take for granted, I realized I couldn’t. Things that were black and white became grey. Things were messy and unpredictable and I hated it. I love order, plans, and predictability. I also realize at times I find predictability unbearably boring and draining…but it’s safe. This month reminded me that safe does not always equal meaningful or helpful. We often spend so much time trying to feel safe that we can smother parts of ourselves, parts that need air and light to thrive. Sometimes we choose to remove the “safe” predictability in our lives, and sometimes it feels beyond our control. When it’s not our choice, when life fees like it’s happening to us rather than us making our lives happen for us…it feels messy.

So what to do? Well, I told you…I hate messes. It makes me feel out of control, not in charge, unhinged. I am the person who fixes the messes…not the one who experiences them…right? Well not always. That being said, I have seen buildings destroyed and rebuilt stronger. Never the less…if you are not the one releasing the wrecking ball…it’s hard to see the silver lining.

This is likely temporary…these feelings, this situation, very little if anything is forever…life goes on

Strength goes hand in hand with vulnerability (without vulnerability we are closed and unable to adapt).

Asking for help takes strength

Leveraging resources is a sign of resilience

Messes can help us acknowledge parts of ourselves we hid

So…today I ask YOU for your insight. When were you most uncertain? What gave you the confidence that you needed to ride it out?

With Love,

Rachel

**If you want help taking ownership of your time, contact me about my time-management workshop. It’s fun, personal, and will leave you with a calendar you will love. Interested in shaking things up? Contact me about my individual, couples, or group Vision Board workshop and discover new ways of creative planning.

One of my own personal challenges, as well as many of my clients is my desire to “get it right.” Get what right? It could be anything from loading a dishwasher, packing my children’s lunches, to planning a family vacation. And of course, there is nothing wrong with wanting to do a good job at something, the challenge is when our definition of “right” narrows our possibility for success. My husband will lovingly remind me by saying “Rachel…there’s no perfect equation for this situation, stop looking for it.” We can spend so much time seeking the “perfect solution” to a problem at work, a challenging relationship, challenges we are having with our children or family. We can also spend too much time trying to perfect our home, our wardrobe, our bodies, ect… The funny thing is, we usually don’t even realize that we are aiming for perfection!

Accountability. Let’s take some responsibility for our feelings. Often when something is stressing us out, we fail to acknowledge our own role in creating that stress. We have all heard our friends (or ourselves) complain about planning their weddings or stressing about what to wear to an optional event and thought… “then why are you doing that?” or “why are you going to that event?” I have been that person. A couple years ago I worked myself into a tizzy planning an optional party, of which by the time the night came I was exhausted and just wanted it to be over so I could go to bed. I spent too much time wanting everything to be “just right,” I was unable to enjoy myself. I also recently wrote about how I stopped folding my children’s clothes. I had this idea that all the clean clothes in my laundry room HAD to be folded and put away in drawers. I realized if I let go of this goal, I would have much more time on my hands. Now, my kids get a few outfits a week that I toss in the washer and dryer and if you go into my laundry room you will see two big baskets of kids clothes (one for each). I remember thinking to myself “what would someone think?!” if they opened my laundry room. So silly, (I know no one would care) but that voice in my head is what actually kept me folding these tiny toddler clothes. Now the only clothes in my house I fold and put away are my own!

Why seeking perfection isn’t helpful?
Seeking perfection is limited because it is fear based. It also narrows your definition of success, which in turn, narrows your ability to find meaning and or happiness in many situations. For example, if your workout routine only “counts” if you do a certain, very specific routine, you lose out on the option of having a spontaneous workout with a friend, trying something new, being challenged in a new way. Same with something simple like cooking a meal. If we only enjoy cooking the meal if it comes out “perfect” we will fail to recognize any enjoyment we might have had in the process of creating it. Perfection eclipses any possibility of a process-focused activity, and turns it into a results-only focused activity. These activities are often rigid and unforgiving.

How to know when perfection is getting in your way?
When we try and “perfect,” we tend to overlook the emotional costs of our goal. Stop and ask yourself… ‘how will it feel to reach my goal in this manner?’ ‘How does this plan feel?’ If we take just a minute and stop and imagine how we might feel carrying out one of our goals from beginning to end, and truly examine the emotional process…we might realize the parts of our plan that are “too much” or unnecessary.

What might you stop trying to perfect?

**If you want help taking ownership of your time, contact me about my time-management workshop. It’s fun, personal, and will leave you with a calendar you will love.

What if we all stopped trying to “keep up?” Last week I gave a Time Management workshop to a group of parents. They all expressed that they attended the workshop because they felt time management was important, and most of them expressed having “no time but to just keep up.” Keep up with work, house chores, child care, family responsibilities ect… I asked them what they wanted more time for and they expressed more time with their partner, more time to play with kids (without trying to accomplish something at the same time), more time alone to explore their own interests, ect… We reflected on how exactly we were spending most moments of our day. We took an inventory. Then we talked about what was not necessary. What in fact we could stop doing. One mans jaw dropped when I told him I stopped folding my children’s clothes. I just decided it didn’t bring anyone in my family joy or meaning and it actually wasn’t helpful in getting the kids ready. So I stopped.

What would it look like to stop keeping up. The term “keeping up” is a very reactive statement. It means we are trying to deal, cope, and get-by. Getting-by is not flourishing or thriving. Getting-by can be saved for when someone gets sick or we are coping with an emergent situation.

Why do we often feel like we are keeping up: because we are. I didn’t want other parents to judge me, so I spent too many minutes folding toddler clothes. How else do we “keep up?” Is your gym routine about fitness and emotional balance, or the way you look? Is that birthday dinner you are attending with a group of people that add value to your life, or is it so you don’t “feel guilty” for not going? Do you make your bed only when people come over or do you make it because you love crawling into a well-made bed at night (like my husband does…I never made a bed before we met).

Why does a value driven calendar make the world a better place? When we stop trying to keep up, and instead set our own intentions for how we spend our time, we are able to be of more service to ourselves, and the world at large. We are not running around feeling like victims, but instead, empowered beings that can make a difference. We can take time to determine our values, and then decide how to best use our time…even down to the minute.

What will you stop doing?

Cheers,

Rachel

**If you want help taking ownership of your time, contact me about my time-management workshop. It’s fun, personal, and will leave you with a calendar you will love.

Does it seem like some people have it all? In an age of social media, facebook, instagram, pictures being texted, posted, forwarded, ect… Many of us come across a barrage of captured moments in other people’s lives. We see funny clips, smiling friends, exotic travel pictures, delicious meals, vacations, snuggly babies, fancy clothes, made up faces, innocent love, ect… And while our conscious-self knows that these pictures are just one part of this persons life, and that there are many other moments in that same persons life that are not picture-worthy, a part of our sub-conscious often asks ourselves… “How do I get that?”

It’s both a beautiful and dangerous tendency that we as humans want to imitate what we think are the best parts of others’ lives. We see someone who can afford to travel to exotic places and think…I should be able to do that. We see a parent who seemingly spends endless amounts of time with their child, and think, I should not only be able to do that, I should want that. We see people who have “perfect” bodies on the outside, and think…what should I be doing to look like that. Often times, because of the way our brains work, we see the extremes. The perfect physique, the most admirable career, the “happiest” marriage, the up-to-date-wardrobe, and the care-free hammock with warm salty water in the background. We even try to be realistic about these lofty goals… if I work hard and save, if I find the perfect job, if I go to the gym four times a week, ect… Still, we often do not see what others give up in order to obtain such “magical picture” moments, or what they have chosen to give up.

It’s so hard to know the difference between striving for better, and seeking unrealistic perfection. How can we tell the difference? How can we know what to strive for personally?

In 2017, I challenge us all to strive for meaning…instead of happiness.I trust that a version of happiness can only come from finding meaning in how we spend our time. The only resolution one needs is to commit them self to a life that supports, inspires, and enables actions that bring them meaning.

How do we know if something adds meaning to our life? How do we lead a lifestyle that inspires meaning? Ask our selves: